And All Of Everything
by Bialy
Summary: She came to you by walking through a window and stepping across the stars. The barriers of worlds were pushed back to let her through, and she stepped into your kingdom. JarethxSarah. Oneshot.


Disclaimer: I don't own Labyrinth, or anything associated with it. Lyrics are The Libertines.

Note: Mainly this is me playing with imagery. But it's also mainly JarethxSarah, just some aimless meandering through their characters. Hope you enjoy. First attempt at Labyrinth and writing real people (though Labyrinth isn't all that realistic, to be fair), so I hope it's not mangled too badly.

x

**And All Of Everything**

-

_if you wanna try, if you wanna try  
__there's no worse you can do  
i know you lie, i know you lie  
i'm still in love with you  
can't take you anywhere  
can't take me anywhere  
can't take you anywhere you want to go  
you can't stand me now_

_-_

She came to you by walking through a window and stepping across the stars. The barriers of her world, and your world, and every world, were pushed back – just for a second – to let her through. With footfalls as soft as angels treading on down, she stepped into your kingdom.

You had watched her for a while. Her hair was dark, and you liked the way it fell. She would put rouge on her lips and powder on her eyes and rehearse lines from a story about a world that didn't exist, and you thought that her voice was like a melody. You liked how she furrowed her brow, how the light lace of her costumes fell about her, how she was young and naive and so strong at the same time, so incredibly, strangely strong.

So you left her a book. A real story, this time, to replace her fairytales and dreams. But you changed it, played with your reality in the words you put down, building it up around her thoughts and her barely-formed wishes for a world she wanted. And she found it, this slim little volume with all the secrets of your heart and hers, in a bookshop at the end of a road, on the day she thought she would. And she took it home. You listened to her reading from it for hours on end, her face fixed and earnest, suspended in crystal, and she said, "Give me the child."

She was caught in a fantasy and you liked that about her, too. That's why you wrote it down, the story of your realm, and sent it across space and time and unmagic for her to find. That's why you set it all down, that's why you wove so many of her secrets through it that it was sure to enthral her. You watched her read the lines about you over to herself, lines you had deliberated over, fretting about the phrasing. Her lips moved silently, word after word, committing it to memory, and you couldn't take your eyes off her. You legs felt hollow and your head felt light and all the stars shone brighter and she murmured something you hadn't written: "but the Goblin King had fallen in love with the girl". And it had been obvious all along.

You couldn't explain why you did it, when later, as she spoke to her brother, curled in his cot, about special powers, why you whispered to the goblins about the new rule about wishing. She told you that you loved her and you were helpless. You gave her the powers, let her summon you, because you had to and because this was the last, the first and the only chance to cross over to her. You came to her in the flurry of feathers and fur she expected of you, and all of the trappings of state and all the monotony of life fell away like scales. There she was, frightened but steely and strong, and you turned, and she followed.

You chased her around corners and she hunted you through tunnels and for a handful of hours she was yours and yours alone. For the girl who lived in fairytales, you had crafted her one of her own, stacked up around her, bending and stretching and towering over her, pressing and relaxing all at once. And she stepped away from the magic and the mystery and she became the warrior you knew she was, and she stood three steps away from you and said, "You have no power over me".

And in the end, she was always going to turn away because that was how the story ended. And you were always going to sit here, gathering rust, in the land where time is little more than a game, and keep watching her. You watch her life go by, you watch her dark hair turn grey and then thin and then see her face wizen, see her casket closed, all in the space of one dream. And as the dream ends, and she wakes, three days after she turned away from you, you still think she is the most beautiful thing.

You are in love with her. She makes you burn and writhe and shift the solar system to bring her a star, and she does it while only half-believing in you, only brushing against you on the fringes of sleeping. This, you think, is what happens in the thirteenth hour, after midnight has come and passed and the book of time has been closed, and you are trailing onwards. This is emptiness, and endlessness, and a dark, stretching night with no glimpse of morning. This is the end of the page, the white space after the words finish, the gap between dying and death. And this is where you linger her, watching her, and the night is warm and her window is open and if you were just a little braver –

And you're not sure which is cowardice at all; stepping up to her window or turning back to your throne. In the end you decide on neither, hovering on the precipice between worlds, watching her stretch and yawn in the glow of daybreak. Your choice has been to wait for her, if she should ever call for you – if she should ever need you, you think, though it seems needlessly romantic even in your thoughts – and to stay here, a silent guard, frozen between reality and unbeing.

She turns to look at you. It is the evening of the same day, it is ten years later and two days before, and none of that matters because in her time, you have been standing here forever. And when she sees you, she smiles, gently and softly, with grace and with understanding. And your feet take you forwards, across the same path she trod, though your steps are heavier. At the stroke of thirteen, her hand touches yours...

And _this_ is how the story ends.


End file.
